the big strip tease

Living off jobs which didn’t interfere
With their primary interest—perfect gratification
Unfeeling voyeurs rose from their chairs

It was the big strip tease
Taken off, sliding down satin legs, thrown off a now bare torso
Items of societal dignity

The audience, whistling and hooting
In cahoots
Fate in open connivance with the living

What they desired,
The law-abiding quotidian,
Mayhem.
Their loins ached for
That bit of flesh—ravishing, succulent

He sulked in his chair
Glug, glug the pegs burnt
The lampshades turned upside down
The existences murky

Desires flitted like bluebottles
Imagination begot dirty wings
The untouchable was here
In the face

Yet now, he thought
Her mystery hidden in a hutch
She invited more

The face, it had to be
The false bravado
The surety
Where did it come from?

She was there,
Glowing naked as a bulb
Yet she wasn’t bare

What the madhouse couldn’t hide
The flesh couldn't show
That mask on her face
That isolation
What did she feel?

How does one feel?
In a place where men are so true
For her to melt into an aphrodisiac